


Where the Light Passes

by R48



Category: Original Work
Genre: Art, Boys In Love, Deaf Character, Disabled Character, Falling In Love, Fluff, Friendship/Love, Historical, Love, M/M, Music, One Shot, Romance, Short & Sweet, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-05-31 21:11:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15127898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/R48/pseuds/R48
Summary: City boy Yong Chun travels to the rural village of Zhengachun in hopes to reignite his love of painting. There, he meets quiet, deaf, An Feng, a gifted musician who composes for a living. Together, they find that sometimes when you run away from one love, you'll find that another will bring you right back to it.





	Where the Light Passes

I found Zhengachun when I decided my art block could only be cured by the peace and quiet of a small village. The appeal came from its average age of 50 and how accessing it required a bus that ran only once a week. Without telling anyone, I left my apartment in the city and hoped they would hear of my success after moving to the village. It’s been three weeks since I’ve moved and I still haven’t painted.

To the disappointment of my parents, I stubbornly pursued a career in _xieyi_ , the traditional style of Chinese painting involving brush and ink. I thought my mother would be proud that I was following in my father’s footsteps. I was seventeen when I told her about wanting to become a painter. She held me in her hands with the comfort only a mother could possess and said to me, “Anything but a painter.”

Why was it that parents encouraged their children to follow their dreams when what they really meant was choose something you can make money with?

With the money I had, I rented a small house near the edge of the village. I felt no particular affection for it except for the path that led to a forest. Naively, I thought only I was aware of it. The landlady watched me disappear into it and when I emerged, I wore the stifled expression of vanity a man would often wear when he thought he had discovered a wonderful secret. I asked her for a contract immediately. Her fingers had run across the edges of my indented name on the credit card, and she had turned to get the paperwork, muttering something about “city folk” that I was surely meant to hear.

Having grown up in the city, I had never experienced the tranquil silence of nature such as in the forest. It reminded me of the hills and trees I had painted when I had first started and in it, I found comfort. I went there each morning, hopeful to experience the same joy I had felt when I had first started. Each day, I came back with no desire to paint. But at least in the forest there was no one there to ask me why. So when I saw him there for the first time, I was ashamed by my own possessiveness.

He sat with the air of a prince against a large tree, his feet tanned and cracked, peeking through worn shoes that dug into the dirt and roots surrounding him. I felt the serenity I was searching for. That I found it in him made me envious. Slender fingers drummed listlessly on his thigh. His eyes were small and narrow. His nose was flatter than mine too. I stepped through the trees, satisfied. At least I am more handsome than him.

A branch snapped under me, startling the quiet. The birds fled from where they perched on the trees. He looked at them first before his eyes landed on me with so much indifference that I felt a childish outrage boiling within me. He was the intruder, not me, and I wanted him to know that.

“Hello,” I said, setting my jaw. He said nothing, but the hand that he had been drumming on his thigh stopped. Upon seeing his startled expression, I softened in my anger. Cautiously, I walked towards him. “I’m Yong Chun,” I said, holding out my hand to him.

His eyes never left mine when he took my hand. He was sweating from the hot sun, as I was. The shirt he wore was damp and clung to his chest. It had been some time since I’ve seen someone my own age. I realized how desperate I was for friends.

“An Feng,” he mumbled. The words were spoken so clumsily that I could not make note of his voice. After introducing himself, An Feng turned his head and shoulders away from me. He said nothing and after some time, continued the drumming on his thigh. Later, I left the forest feeling no need for protection against the judgment of a stranger’s eyes.

The rejection wounded me so deeply that before long I began asking the women in the village about him.

“What a shame,” the women said, shaking their heads in unison. I did not understand and told them so. They said, “Couldn’t you tell, city boy? He’s deaf. Can’t hear a thing.”

I gaped at them stupidly like a fish.

“Such a shame,” they continued. “He’s handsome and comes from a good family but no woman wants to marry a deaf man. If he was mute, girls from all over China would be coming here to meet him. What woman wouldn’t want a husband who could listen but never talks back?” They broke out into laughter and handed me a bag of handmade dumplings.

Eventually, I learned that he was a guzheng player who took to composing songs for artists in the capital. He was talented, they told me. The pride of the village. Such a shame.

I came back to the forest each day with no other purpose than to watch him as he imitated the plucking of fingers on the guzheng. Sometimes I would pretend to be asleep, and if I were lucky, he would hum part of the song he was composing. His voice was full and ripe as summer fruit. Often, I wondered about the songs that played in his head. There were times when he would tug on my sleeve or tap me on the shoulder and nod his head towards what he wanted me to look at. A bird. A leaf. Sometimes it was only the way the light passed through the trees. Each time I would look on eagerly, ready to witness whatever beauty my dull perception had failed to notice. And when I looked back at him his lips would tug at the corners and it was the only time in the day where I would feel anything.

Our summer days were filled with time spent in the forest. When An Feng was not composing, we would climb trees or catch frogs hiding in the dirt. We would return in the night, our hair damp with sweat and our lungs gasping for air from our laughter. My clothes were never clean but I did not care. Fresh produce came into the village once a week and I discovered his love for peaches. His talented, dexterous fingers would pull apart the fruit and eat until his belly was thick and his fingers were sticky with sweetness. We would invent games to play. Some days he asked me about the city. There were endless things to do. Endless ways to waste our time.

“Play for me,” I said to him one day. We had gone to the river to cool ourselves from the summer's heat. I was twenty-eight and had my feet dangling in the water. An Feng, two years younger, stood barefoot in the river and rested his elbows on the wooden bridge I sat on.

He looked at me like I was stupid.

“For a deaf person who spends his time in the forest alone you sure are arrogant,” I said, completely charmed. “Do you think your songs are too good for me?”

He broke into his most guileless grin. An Feng put his hand in mine and with his finger, wrote one character. _No_. Then he rested his head in his arms and closed his eyes, his hair matted with sweat against his forehead.

I held onto the finger he lingered on my palm. “What can I do so you’ll play for me?” I asked.

He pulled his hand back slowly and I let him go. We gazed at each other. An Feng took my hand and I watched his finger trace over my palm again. Instead of the familiar wide stroke across my palm that began the character for ‘No’ he wrote, _Paint for me_. I swallowed and looked at him. His skin had darkened even more so from the sun. The collar of his shirt was unbuttoned. A chrysanthemum petal lingered in his hair.

“No,” I said. I had not painted in months.

_Then I won’t play._

I was too at peace to argue with him. “How do you even do it?” I asked, gesturing to his ears with a lopsided grin. We did not need to be delicate with each other.

An Feng plucked a reed from beside where he stood. He dipped the stem into the river creating ripples in what was still waters. With the familiarity of a lover, An Feng took my hand and drew it across my body, exposing my wrist and imitated playing on my forearm. The pads of his fingers were callused, but smooth like rocks that had been worn by the river. He drew the characters for _Vibrations_ on my arm and looked at me brightly.

Maybe it was the way his tanned fingers pressed upon my skin, soft and pale from days in the city. Maybe it was because I felt what had passed between us when he touched me. He noticed I was staring at him.

He tilted his head. _What’s wrong?_

“Sunburn,” I lied, pulling my arm away quickly. His unbuttoned collar exposed the mole next to his collarbone. “Do you see it? The vibrations.” I wanted to distract him and myself.

He nodded sheepishly. _Yes._

“Do you feel it?”

_Of course._

“What does it feel like?” I was like a child, eager and curious, basking in his knowledge.

An Feng paused for a moment, thinking. With the reed still in his hand, he waved it in the air in long, wide strokes like the wind carrying leaves. _Maybe like how you feel when you paint._

I looked forward to the mountains and hills that lined the horizon. The shapes became blurry. I blinked. “I don’t remember the feeling.” He was quieter than usual; I could not feel his movements in the air. It was not my intention to make the air so heavy between us. “Is it sad that I’ve never seen it like you have?” I took the reed from him and waved it in the air, thrashing it about as if to emphasize my dullness. The question was meant to be lighthearted and teasing. I expected him to nod and grin with mock smugness.

But instead, An Feng raised his head up to regard me. _No. It is sad when it’s been too long for you to remember._

I did not know what to say to this. Instead, we both sat on the bridge until the light disappeared behind the mountains and took away the sight of his profile from my eyes. The cloth of his shorts dried and flecked with moss. Sometime in those hours, I reached for his hand. I think sometime later, he reached for mine too.

Perhaps if I was a good son, I would feel guilt. Now I was not only the disappointment of a son who wanted to be a painter, but I was also the disappointment of a son who was in love with a man.

The feeling consumed me from within like a fallen tree, dead and cold, returning to the earth and breathing in life again. It no longer bothered me when the women spoke of his good looks. In the forest, the sun would always find him so that he shone with so much youthful brilliance that I found myself unable to move. Who were they to speak of his beauty when they had never truly witnessed it? The ones I envied were those who have heard him play. I spent hours listening to them describe his music feeling raw envy gnaw away at me.

One day in the forest, I asked him again.

“Play for me.” I asked so much that he took to writing ‘No’ on my palm when I arrived at the forest each day before speaking a word.

He was composing a song in his head when I had interrupted him.

_Do we need to do this again?_

“Yes.”

_You know what my answer will be._

I gazed at him, basking in my predictability, and wanted nothing more than to surprise him.

“Then ask it.”

_Will you paint for me?_

His expression made me want to bury his head into my shoulder. I knew he would smell like fresh leaves and the salt of the river.

“I will paint for you,” I said. Then, almost to myself, “if it meant I could hear the songs that came to life in your head, I would.”

He searched my face for any dishonesty and I felt a heat rising to my neck. I turned away from him. Whatever sounds emitted by the forest were silenced by the pounding of my heart.

Was he angry with me? Did he hate me now? How quickly I begin to doubt myself when faced with uncertainty.

After a moment, I heard the sounds of the earth beneath his feet and when I turned back, he had stood and waited for me to do the same. I did not take the hand he reached out for me. A part of me worried I would reach for him and pull him into me with so much force that we would break each other.

We left the forest in silence and I followed him into the village, passing the shops and stalls in a blur. After the market, we took to climbing a hill using a beaten dirt path. Halfway up and the path had disappeared. By the time we arrived at his house, the sun had set, and my feet ached with a soreness I was too prideful to admit.

An Feng brought me to an open room furnished with only a guzheng and a low table set up with painting supplies beside it. On the far side of the room was a window covered by wooden shutters. He left to the kitchen to prepare tea.

I stood awkwardly until he came back with a pot and cups in his hands. “An Feng, did you know I would give in to you?” I said.

He only shrugged and gestured for me to sit in front of the table. As I seated myself, An Feng set one of the cups down and poured tea out of the pot. I watched the hot liquid fill my cup. When he pulled away, a few drops managed to drip onto the canvas.

“You’d make a terrible concubine,” I said.

He snorted and tipped over the pot, spilling a few drops more.

An Feng went to the chair in front of the guzheng after filling his own cup. I sat, watching the steam from my tea cup disappear into the air.

I turned my gaze to the spilled tea that so mockingly reminded me of the tears I had spilled after speaking with my mother. Anything but a painter. I shut my eyes. For a moment, I wish I were born deaf.

An Feng played a note. He struck at a single string and I lifted my head. I could not miss anything. I would never forgive myself. Time passed and nothing else followed. I turned to him and witnessed his face pale and tear streaked while feeling my own heart breaking.

I was beside him and cradled him in my arms. I will never let him go. At my table, An Feng took the brush from me and wrote, _I can’t remember the feeling_. Viciously, he traced over the characters again and again until his tears blended with the ink.

“An Feng,” I said. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to do this.”

 _What am I if not a musician?_   His actions were so vulgar it were as if he had said, “nothing but a deaf man waiting to die.”

He wrote quickly, spilling his heart onto the canvas. All this time I had thought he was born like this. A prodigy who could compose beautifully without ever hearing his music. He gave me the truth: as a child, he was sent to a school in the capital for those gifted in music. Living in the pollution caused an illness that slowly began chipping away at his hearing. By the time he was nineteen, it had left him completely. He refused to play and returned to the village.

_I can’t remember anymore._

I thought of how he spent his time alone in the forest and how I had plucked him from his serenity, and my heart ached so tenderly I wanted to cry out that I had wronged him. What pain I felt for myself was nothing compared to what I felt for him. I had lost nothing.

With each shudder of his body I pulled him closer hoping that every piece of him that threatened to shatter away would melt into me. I would protect him from everything. Darkness passed over us in the night as we sat there in silence. The only thing I remember was the smell of salt in his hair and the taste of tears on my lips.

When I woke, An Feng was still in my arms. His soft content sighs would be a sound I would never allow myself to forget.

The light passed through the shutters waking him. He saw that my arms were wrapped around him and he peeked at my face meekly, realizing I was awake and turned away from me.

“Good morning,” I said.

He nodded.

I let out a sigh. “So is this where people come to run away from themselves?” I said dryly.

He had hid his face from me well but I have studied him so precisely that I could tell when his cheek was lifted into a grin.

We sat like this until I heard the low rumble of his stomach. I stepped away from his shaken form to open the shutters, hoping the light could offer him some comfort as I have never been good with words. When I opened them, there, with complete clarity, was the place in the forest that I once thought was a secret. That time he had pointed to the leaves, was it to show me that this was where he had seen me first?

How much of him did I miss? And finally, the thought that caused my elation: perhaps all this time he loved me too in his silence.

The sound of the guzheng drew me away from the window and back to An Feng. I wanted to tell him to stop, that I did not need him to play anymore. But as I watched him struggle to play through each note, I found that I couldn’t and that it was not protection he needed from me but courage.

_Paint for me._

The brush felt foreign in my hand and at first, my strokes were of nothing. An Feng continued, each note clear as spring water resonating into the air. His deft fingers plucked and strummed a song so pure and sweet that I did not realize I was holding my breath as I listened. As the song continued, I thought of our time spent together. I thought of the reeds and the old wooden bridge by the river. I thought too of the leaves he pointed out to me and where the light passed through the trees. The painting breathed in life.

When I finally finished, my hand ached and I realized I was panting. I turned to him and saw his fingers had become raw and red. My eyes lifted to his and we returned each other’s gaze, sharing in the same breathlessness.

An Feng pressed a finger to his temple then pointed at the scroll. He brought it to the center of his chest then to the guzheng.

“Yes,” I understood. I had moved him, just as he moved me, and it thrilled me. There will never again be any falsities between us.

The days continued and the weather began to turn. Soon the leaves would fall and the river too cold to swim in. My feet became cracked and broken from my time in the village. In an unexpected act of kindness, my mother sent me ointment from the city to soothe the aching. When An Feng smelled them, he wrinkled his nose.

_Doesn’t smell like you, Yong Chun. I don’t like it._

I never used them again but kept them in a drawer beside my bed next to the letters she wrote me.

Before I realized, my thoughts were no longer about returning to the city. I began to paint more and often. An Feng, though hesitant at first, shared his compositions with me. We would be there for hours, until the sun set and I lost his fingers in the darkness.

A year had passed since I’ve moved to Zhengachun. It was the summer of my twenty-ninth year. My hair had grown longer, the tips damp against the back of my neck. The paleness of my skin disappeared and resembled a shade similar to heartwood.

I followed the path down to the forest and through the trees, emerging into the clearing where An Feng was waiting for me. What remained unchanged was the way the light passed through the trees and sculpted his face. He reached for my hand and I gave myself to him. Turning over my palm, he drew the familiar stroke that began the three characters he would always greet me with.

_Paint for me._

He smiled and I could feel him say my name in the sun.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this story after I got subtly called out by my English professor for writing something that was too...graphic? Anyways, my answer to that is a sweet, love story between two men running away from their problems and facing them together. I really love these two and I hope whoever reads this does too. I'm working on other stories right now since I've been trying to find a way to bring it back into my life.  
> If you like Fire Emblem, The Song of Achilles, or Psycho Pass be sure to check out some of my other stories.  
> I'm hoping to write a few more of these in the near future =]  
> Until next time! - r48


End file.
